most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.

Thursday, August 06, 2015

urinals of the world

hi there

i am prepared to admit, look you see, that the title of this blog post is somewhat misleading, or indeed even a tad incorrect. the plural is entirely superfluous, for a start, and thus as a consequence the claim of them, or if you like it, being "of the world" is on the whole incorrect. downright false, actually. sorry, but at least you have got the disappointment out of the way early on.

my good friend Spiros has elected to go on a tour of various areas of Europe noted for being home to what many may well consider to be a disproportionate number of peasants. i can't tell you why he has done this because, honestly, i am not really or particularly interested beyond him bringing back some lovely, cheap cigarettes. and even then, dear reader, i suspect that instead of Marlboro he shall be going out of his way to find me brands such as Κρίμα and Φιλικό Κυρίου. i can't wait. regardless, Spiros has elected to send me images from time to time and i have decided to share them here, mostly for the benefit of all you Spiros enthusiasts. the first one is, i am sure you can guess, of a gentleman's restroom facility.

Spiros is quite enamoured, if not enthralled, by gentlemen's toilets. he reckons they are not so much "as good a place as any" to meet men, but rather an exceptionally good place to do this. he likes to share his enthusiasm for them by sending me pictures of particular noteworthy ones. famously, as it happens, he once sent me some 300MB images of the restroom facilities at Dubai airport, and regaled me with tales of the many Arabic and Turkish gentlemen who seem content to spend hours standing around the entrance of them.

the above urinal is unmistakably Greek, which would make sense as Greece was on the list of areas Spiros reckoned he was going to go and see to survey peasants and a few scrapyards. beyond the classical architecture of their distinct and distinguished urinals, Greece has in recent times become rather famous for one or two minor economic indiscretions. in official terms, their economy "πήγε πατήσαμε" and has pretty much remained that way. so it feels somewhat sadistic of me to share an image of a banknote that Greece would probably rather appreciate being sent to them in real terms.

this banknote, with a face value of £10 sterling, was recently issued to me by one of them ATM thingies, or if you like money vending machines. yes, it is quite pretty, but the reason i am sharing it is, you may have worked out, for the fact that it seems to be encoded.

i have, weirdly, had several messages passed on to me in unorthodox ways in the past. am i prepared to discuss or share those ways with you? not really. one or two of them are ones which conjure somewhat fond memories; ones from a time when i might be persuaded to have considered myself, as an existence, worthwhile. for the most part, though, messages are usually conveyed to me via the usual means - letters in the post, more recently emails and texts, people randomly yelling "wanker" at me in public places, telephone calls and the occasional drop by and visit from time to time.

someone going to the time and trouble to send me a message via a banknote dispensed by one of them cash machines is, however, a new one. which is kind of weird as i spent some 14 years working in a bank, now that i think. i mean, how could they have known that i would have used that machine at such a time to get the note with the message on it? that's James Bond stuff, man. except without the being picky about vintages of wine, troubling myself with concerns about if a drink was shaken or stirred and, perhaps regrettably, without the random and apparently very easy to get sex with ladies who shall invariably attempt to kill me not too long after the fact.

we shall return to the encoded banknote later, but for now, more of the Spiros tour of peasants and indeed back to the land where the economy "πήγε πατήσαμε". and further indeed, back to the hope that he remembers to bring me back some class fags.

the focal point of this image is the magnificent, bowl like ashtray you can see. it's a very very attractive one and Spiros has pledged, even if it means that the Greek economy goes even more "πήγε πατήσαμε", he will bring it home for me. he does not care if people have to get hurt in the process of him getting it. yes i did, as it happens, ask him about the suntan lotion. i asked him if he had gone all nancy boy, using lotions and oils to bronze himself in the vicinity of the agean sea sun. his answer was "that is not lotion, bru". fearing that it might be related to any one of several gents he met at the bathroom from earlier, i troubled myself with asking him no further questions. yes, i do actually appreciate that i should be posting further images from our time away in Scarborough rather than troubling you all with this, but i am doing this now, so there you go. here, dear reader who has got this far, here's a closer look at the apparently coded message on the bank note.

what does it mean? i mean, what is it that someone is trying to tell me? as far as i can work out, someone seems to have wished for me to spend £146 on Carling, which is an awful lot to spend on glorified, fizzy water, and to that extent handed over either £150 or £180 to get it, with the matter of if that is a 5 or an 8 being rather unclear. i'm going to assume that the translation is not quite so literal as the above, but without a cypher or some sort of clue i'm afraid that's the only possible interpretation i can reach. perhaps, i suppose, the message was intended for someone else, and i rather inadvertently intercepted it.if this message wasn't intended for me - and for all i know it's all to do with some sports sponsorship deal being brokered - then i can only hope the intended recipient has somehow found the message here and has responded or acted accordingly. in the mean time, i shall probably just spend the note with the code on it on some item or other. right, i am off to write a fairly strongly worded letter to Royal Mail, and then i suspect i shall be retiring for the evening. so a post of actual interest might not be coming your way here tonight, sorry.be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!